We all have to deal with deadlines, but that shared anxiety doesn’t make it much easier to deal with as they approach.

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In the wee hours of yesterday morning, I popped into a coffee shop called Imagine Coffee. Imagine that!
After buying my typical iced Americano, several hours were spent pouring over textbooks and online lectures in a rather uncomfortable wooden chair. But why subject myself to this caffeinated restlessness? Because Oregon State University’s College of Engineering puts forth the gauntlet of qualifying exams for all Ph.D. students after their first year. They want to see if you truly “think” like an academic and test both your written and oral mental fortitude. Mine are in less than a month, and I’m sure many students have echoed this sentiment over the years, but full conceptual understanding feels as distant as an oasis in the middle of the Sahara right now.

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Seeing that day inching its way inevitably closer gives me the slightest understanding of what it must have been like for the Spartans of Thermopylae, standing resolute as the Persian exam comes in on foot, chariot, and other more intense machines of war.
I’m being facetious, but it doesn’t mean I don’t wish down to my thickest bones for this test to be over. I do have hope that one day that giant will lie on the barren earth, defeated. As the reader, if you also have looming deadlines, what is your best method of attack in keeping your cool?

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At this point, all I can say is take heart. This too shall pass.